


(don't) get lost in the blue

by pallorsomnium



Series: For My Family (We Are The Resistance) [4]
Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Pre-Slash, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 03:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3594084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallorsomnium/pseuds/pallorsomnium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Erik saw Charles’ resolve as cold fire; his own burned hot, like molten iron. But Charles </i>understood<i>, like no one else had. And now, Erik looked into Charles’ endless blue eyes and saw his perfect match, his other half. </i></p><p>Charles and Erik Drift together for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(don't) get lost in the blue

**Author's Note:**

> My first completed fic in what feels like ages, oh my goodness. Hello there, long time no see. Work has taken up my life, but I've somehow found the time to finally finish one of the half-written fics sitting around on my Drive! No promises on if I can get my longer WIPs updated anytime soon considering my ridiculous schedule, but who knows, miracles have happened. In the meantime, please enjoy this fic!
> 
> (This fic is currently un-beta'd.)

In the short time since meeting Charles, Erik had discovered that the man -- his _partner_ , and the thought still made him undignifiedly giddy -- had two states of motion. Half the time, Erik would find him standing (or sitting) stock still, a sea of tranquility rolling off him even as he was lost in thought.

At other times, Charles wouldn’t stop moving, a bundle of boundless energy never staying in one place for long, as if he was trying to make up for the ten years he’d spent trapped in a chair. It was those times when Erik was most affected by the sheer brilliance of Charles’ prosthetics, at what Dr McCoy had given back to Charles.

The day of their first trial run though, he found Charles in his pensive state, staring off into nothing and standing like a living statue in the middle of his living quarters in only compression shorts and a t-shirt. Erik ignored the sharp flare of want he felt at the sight of Charles in those skin-tight shorts, and instead frowned in concern over Charles’ silence. Even at his most introspective, Charles would normally take the time to at least smile at Erik.

“Charles?” Erik called his name softly, not wanting to startle him. “Is something wrong?”

Charles blinked, and his eyes finally focused on Erik. Erik had stopped having to catch his breath every time Charles looked his way, but he still found Charles’ eyes so disarming, so blue.

“Erik,” Charles said his name like a sigh, the tension leaving his body along with his exhale. He then gave Erik a small smile. “Good morning. We have our first trial run today.”

“Are you nervous?” Erik asked, though he knew Charles well enough to know that he probably wasn’t--at least not about drifting with Erik.

“Of course not. I trust you, and I have no doubts that we’re compatible,” Charles replied with a shake of his head. As he spoke, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants before turning his full attention back to Erik. “I was simply thinking about everything that has led me here. It’s rather unbelieveable, don’t you think? Ever since I was a boy, I wanted to be a scientist, and yet here I am, about to pilot a giant robot to save our world from aliens.”

The smile he gave Erik this time was sardonic and painful, and Erik wanted to pull him into his arms and hold him tightly--but they haven’t spent enough time together for such a thing, so instead he reached out and grabbed hold of Charles’ hand. Charles started, looking down at their joined hands before meeting Erik’s eyes.

“You’re not alone, Charles,” Erik said and thought of his mother.

He didn’t think of her often--at least not too closely. To think about her led to pain, and it was so much easier to feel anger, and to find purpose in that anger. Everything he did, every decision he’d made in the last ten years had been for her, in memory of her. Because the same day Charles had lost Raven, Erik had lost his mother.

Erik saw Charles’ resolve as cold fire; his own burned hot, like molten iron. But Charles _understood_ , like no one else had. And now, Erik looked into Charles’ endless blue eyes and saw his perfect match, his other half.

“Yes,” Charles said softly. “I’m not alone.”

Then he smiled brightly, and it was like the sun, chasing away the clouds. Erik couldn’t help, but tighten his grip on Charles’ hand.

“Will you come with me to see her before we get ready?” he asked, and Erik didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. He _knew_ , and so he nodded and left the room, Charles’ hand still in his.

 

* * *

 

“She’s beautiful,” Charles said, just as he’d said the first time they’d seen her together, and Erik again nodded in agreement.

They stood side by side on the mid-level observation deck, one of the many gangways that wrap around the periphery of the Alaska Shatterdome.

Standing before them was Astral Black, the Jaeger Erik has always thought of as his. Now she was _his and Charles’_ , and she couldn’t be more perfect: eighty meters tall and sleek jet black, trimmed sparingly in red with a magenta PPDC decal over her vortex turbine.

The Corp had started to build her the year after Erik entered Jaeger Academy. The moment he’d laid eyes on her, at the time mere skeleton and infant circuitry, he had known as sure as the sun rose and set that he would be the one to pilot her. During his Academy years, when he wasn’t studying or training, he would sit right where he stood now with Charles, feet dangling off the edge of the gangway, and watch as the tech crew painstakingly brought Astral Black to being. After failures upon failures to drift with another pilot, Erik would return not to his bunk, but to the observation deck, where he ignored his aching head and gazed across the Shatterdome at the Jaeger he’d just tried to connect with, that stood silent and waiting, just like he had been.

Presently, Astral Black seemed to hum with excitement, though he couldn’t be sure if he was simply projecting his own anticipation or if he should attribute the notion to the activity all around her--more than he’d seen in ages--as the tech crew prepared her for his and Charles’ neural test.

Erik turned his head to look at Charles, eyes tracing his distinct profile as the man -- _his copilot_ , he was reminded yet again -- stared out at their Jaeger.

Charles turned his head as well, responding to Erik’s gaze with his own, and there was something on the tip of Erik’s tongue, something he wanted to say if he could just figure out the words.

Then, an announcement blared overhead: “ _Astral Black neural test begins in twenty minutes. Rangers Lehnsherr and Xavier, report to the Drivesuit Room._ ”

And Erik forgot he wanted to say anything at all as Charles smiled at him, bright and fierce.

 

* * *

 

Soon, the two of them were stepping into Astral Black’s Conn-Pod, dressed in matching jet black drivesuits with helmets tucked under an arm.

“ _Two pilots on board_ ,” announced their Jaeger’s AI system.

Erik stood back for a moment, letting Charles familiarize himself with the interior for the first time. Then, without any discussion, they stepped onto the command platform, Erik claiming the left while Charles the right. A pair of tech personnel came up, helping them fasten the Jaeger’s feedback cradle to the back of their suits.

He and Charles exchanged looks as the tech personnel left the pod, and then turned their attention to their HUD, pulling their helmets on in unison.

_“Pilots onboard and ready to connect.”_

After the first year of failures, Erik had stopped feeling the nervous anticipation that usually came before a neural handshake. Now, he dampened the excitement he’d been feeling ever since meeting Charles, letting it recede to a low thrum under his skin, steady and ordinary as his heartbeat.

_“Pilot to pilot connection...engaged. Initiating neural handshake in 10….9...8...7…”_

The AI’s countdown slowly faded from his attention, and at its end, silence swept over and around him as he dropped into the blue hazy space that constituted the Drift.

Snippets of memories flashed by, some his and some Charles. He let them pass by, taking in but not following into their depths.

_lighting candles on a chanukiah with his mother, his father a silent but warm presence in the doorway behind them_

_Charles leaning precariously forward on a stool, watching a man, who could only be his father, work in a lab_

_squaring off against a group of boys who hadn’t been too approving of a German Jewish boy with a tongue too sharp for his own good_

_Charles hiding behind a couch in a too large and too dark room, a little blond girl--Raven--curled up against his side_

_sitting at his drafting table late at night, pressing a T-square against paper as a pencil glided across the surface_

_Charles sitting with a microscope by his left hand, frowning at the fluorescently stained images lined up on the computer screens before him_

_losing grip of his coffee mug while gaping at the TV screen, watching as a monster trampled San Francisco to the ground_

_Charles running and running from an impossible monster and crumbling buildings, pushing away Raven and getting crushed beneath debris_

and then, silence returned, as did the blue of the Drift. Charles appeared before him, and they simply gazed at each other. Erik didn’t say a word and neither did Charles; their exchanged look said it all:

_I know you. I know you and trust you, and we are One._

The Drift faded away to the back of his mind, and Erik returned his attention to reality and the Conn-Pod, looking over the numbers and figures blinking across the HUD.

_“Two pilots engaged in neural bridge.”_

He felt changed, and yet still like himself--or perhaps like a _better_ himself, with Charles in his head and him in Charles’ and Astral Black connecting them together.

They went through the necessary motions to confirm hemisphere calibration, lifting one arm and then the next in perfect unison with Astral Black seamlessly reflecting their movements.

“Excellent work, gentlemen. The neural test is a success,” Dr. Taggert’s voice came through the Jaeger’s comms. “We’re opening the hatch to let you take her out for a stroll.”

He and Charles looked at each other again, not because they needed to, but because they could and wanted to. Charles smiled brightly at him again, and Erik can’t help but smile back, grin wide and toothy with equal exhilaration.

It was only as they took their first steps together out into the world--into their future--that Erik realized, though somehow unsurprised, that Charles’ eyes were the exact shade of blue as the blue of the Drift.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [This](http://atelier-dayz.tumblr.com/post/56896455950/im-still-on-the-fence-about-this-but-this-is) is how I pictured Astral Black.


End file.
